Artist Ambition is a self-moderated joint blog for visual artists to improve their work through specific art exercises. Artists post exercise challenges and share the results. Results will be critiqued upon request of each artist.

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Saturday, June 23, 2012

Erin's introduction: trying to get back in the game

Hello!

I'm Erin. I'm struggling to write an introduction, because I am quite unfocused as an artist (and definitely less accomplished than all of you). I used to do a lot of fantasy art, mainly digital paintings. Then came a six-year foray into a stressful career path completely unrelated to art… and the artistic side of me shriveled up and died. My husband's job recently took us across the country to San Francisco, and I am finding myself without a license in my field, plenty of free time, and a desperate desire to make art an important part of my life again.

I am fascinated by religion and spirituality of all sorts, and will be turning to religious stories and mythologies when trying to figure out what to paint. One of my goals is to paint the angelic hierarchy, which is how I found Angela's blog.

My plan for improvement is to have two tracks: one is lots of drawing and painting from life and from photographs to boost my technical ability. The other is creative pieces where I don't stress out so much about technique but work on letting creativity flow and on actually finishing paintings (I have a problem with that).

Technical:

- Make better use of marks in shading (directional crosshatching rather than smudging, etc.)

- Finally learn proper perspective, so buildings are not intimidating

- Continue to study color theory and never be haphazard about color.

- Work on drawing from life to improve proportions and flow of drawing

Creative:

- Use more detail!

- Stop having areas obfuscated or covered in darkness or texture (I use it as a crutch)

- Do more illustration - have each drawing tell a story, with dynamic figures and expressions

The first thing I'm planning to tackle is perspective, so I checked out a couple library books and will I'll be posting some challenges about that.

Welcome, Erin! It's always great to see more familiar faces here. I am sure art is going to be just like riding a bike for you and I'm so happy for you that you're able to get back into it. I hope this blog can be an inspirational and challenging tool for you.

I look forward to seeing how you can challenge us and how we can return the favor.:)

Thanks to both of you. Coty - I've been going to a ton of sketching meet ups, so it is quite possible I've already meet them! Angela - getting back into it has been a little easier than I expected so far. :)